You've seen the apple trees starting to groan under the weight of their fruit, ripening and ready to be picked — or perhaps simply fall to the ground to rot.

It won't be wasted if Community Fruit Rescue has any say in the matter.

Boulder Food Rescue, which has pedaled surplus grocery stock to the needy for three years, is now teaming with two other nonprofit organizations, under the banner of Community Fruit Rescue, to harvest locally grown fruit that might otherwise be wasted and get it to people for whom it could make the difference between healthy eating and hunger.

"Boulder already has an immense amount of fruit trees all around, and a lot of it ends up just falling down and rotting or people don't want to pick (from) their tree," said Hana Dansky, executive director of Boulder Food Rescue, which marks its third anniversary this year.

"And fruit is not only a local food, but it's a nutritious food. We're really interested in getting food, healthy food, to people who can't traditionally access it."

Bridge House, Emergency Family Assistance Association and Boulder Housing Partners are among the organizations whose clients are expected to be recipients of the fruit rescue's bounty, to be distributed — as Boulder Food Rescue traditionally operates — by bicycle.

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Community Fruit Rescue's other partners, in addition to Boulder Food Rescue, are nonprofits 350 Colorado and Falling Fruit. Credit for being the impetus behind the initiative is going to Falling Fruit, the Boulder-based effort to complete the world's most comprehensive map of urban edibles.

Falling Fruit's co-founders are Ethan Welty, of Boulder, and Caleb Phillips, who is moving back to Boulder this weekend after two years in the Bay Area.

Micah Parkin, executive director of 350 Colorado, gets some help from Haven Nasif, 10, left, and Maia Parkin, 10, as they pick apples from a tree on the grounds of Columbine Elementary in Boulder on Friday as part of a Community Fruit Rescue effort. (Paul Aiken/Daily Camera)

"There are a lot of other examples of this. Successful programs in other cities have inspired us to create one in Boulder," said Phillips, citing Santa Cruz, California, Portland, Oregon, and Atlanta as among the pioneers for the concept. "We've been a little disappointed that one doesn't exist in Boulder."

Although the peak is already past for cherries and mulberries, Phillips said, for pears and apples it's prime time.

"That's what we're going to be focused on in the next month."

Boulder resident Micah Parkin, executive director of 350 Colorado, a nonprofit focused on building a movement to address climate change, sees the fruit rescue as consistent with her work in the ad hoc group Making Local Food Work.

"We're really excited about this particular project because it's a way to meet many of our goals at once — building a stronger sense of community, promoting eating locally and reducing greenhouse gas emissions associated with bringing food in from halfway around the world," Parkin said.

The potential benefits go on, she said, including the fact that preventing an accumulation of rotting and wasted fruit on the ground also removes an attraction for bears, whose presence in the city has created increasing problems in recent years.

"We feel like it's a win-win all the way around, and we're so proud to be part of it," Parkin said.

Volunteers are needed — people who have trees they would like to see harvested, as well as those ready to do the work of getting out there to collect this season's yield.

Of the fruit that is harvested, one-third will go the property owner where the tree is located — if they want it — one-third will go to the volunteers who picked it, and the rest to one of the organizations that Community Fruit Rescue is supporting.

For now, Welty said the fruit rescue is trying to limit its geographic scope to the city of Boulder.

"I would love to be reaching those areas (outside the city) by next year, for example," Welty said. Then, laughing, he said, "If someone has an avocado tree that's fruiting that's maybe outside of Boulder, I'll make an exception."

The Community Fruit Rescue concept is applauded by Betsey Martens, executive director of Boulder Housing Partners. She wrote the original grant for Community Food Share in 1981.

"It's so essential, and what a lot of people don't understand about being elderly or disabled or being on a low income, many are not eating two meals a day," Martens said.

"It is programs like this that are making the difference for some people between maintaining a healthy life and not living a healthy life," she added.

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